Serving bowl in style of Longquan ware

Bowl of deep shape, plain rim.
Clay: gray porcellanous stoneware.
Glaze: thick, glossy celadon, transparent, crackled over foot, on trim but none on base.
Decoration: outside incised floral pattern, thunder pattern at rim; inside six human figures and five inscriptions, impressed.

Maker(s)
Artist: Attributed to Aoki Mokubei 青木木米 (1767-1863)
Historical period(s)
Edo period, early 19th century
Medium
Stoneware with celadon glaze
Style
Kyoto ware
Dimensions
H x Diam: 8.7 x 15.1 cm (3 7/16 x 5 15/16 in)
Geography
Japan, Kyoto prefecture, Kyoto
Credit Line
Gift of Charles Lang Freer
Collection
Freer Gallery of Art Collection
Accession Number
F1897.11
On View Location
Currently not on view
Classification(s)
Ceramic, Vessel
Type

Serving bowl (hachi)

Keywords
Edo period (1615 - 1868), flower, green glaze, Japan, Kyoto ware, stoneware
Provenance
Provenance research underway.
Description

Bowl of deep shape, plain rim.
Clay: gray porcellanous stoneware.
Glaze: thick, glossy celadon, transparent, crackled over foot, on trim but none on base.
Decoration: outside incised floral pattern, thunder pattern at rim; inside six human figures and five inscriptions, impressed.

Label

Son of a Kyoto restaurant owner, the young Mokubei studied Chinese classics, painting, calligraphy, and seal-engraving.  Among his acquaintances were the most important literati painters of the age.  His study of pottery was inspired by reading the Chinese treatise on ceramics, T'ao-Shuo by Chu Yen (1767), and eventually he wrote a Japanese translation of the work.  An album also survives in which Mokubei sketched Chinese ceramics that he studied in private Kyoto collections.  One sketch shows a celadon bowl of the sort made in Ming China and known to Japanese connoisseurs as "doll type" (ningyo-de) because of the figures and mottoes stamped in the interior.  Mokubei's version of the bowl might have served as a cake dish for the Ming form of steeped tea known as sen-cha, popular in literary circles.

Published References
  • Edmond de Goncourt. Objets d'art japonais et chinois, peintures estampes composant la collection de Goncourt. Paris. no. 164.
  • Oriental Ceramics: The World's Great Collections. 12 vols., Tokyo. vol. 10, pl. 206.
Collection Area(s)
Japanese Art
Web Resources
Google Cultural Institute
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